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Harry Turtledove - The Guns of the South
Headquarters
January 20, 1864
Mr. President:
I have delayed replying to your letter of the 4th until the time arrived for the execution of the attempt
on New Berne. I regret very much that the boats on the Neuse & Roanoke are not completed. With
their aid I think success would be certain. Without them, though the place may be captured, the fruits
of the expedition will be lessened and our maintenance of the command of the waters in North
Carolina uncertain.
Robert E. Lee paused to dip his pen once more in the inkwell. Despite flannel shirt, uniform coat, and
heavy winter boots, he shivered a little. The headquarters tent was cold. The winter had been harsh,
and showed no signs of growing any milder. New England weather, he thought, and wondered why
God had chosen to visit it upon his Virginia.
With a small sigh, he bent over the folding table once more to detail for President Davis the
arrangements he had made to send General Hoke's brigade down into North Carolina for the attack on
New Berne. He had but small hope the attack would succeed, but the President had ordered it, and his
duty was to carry out his orders as best he could. Even without the boats, the plan he had devised was
not actually a bad one, and President Davis reckoned the matter urgent...
In view of the opinion expressed in your letter, I would go to North Carolina myself. But I consider
my presence here always necessary, especially now when there is such a struggle to keep the army fed
& clothed.
He shook his head. Keeping the Army of Northern Virginia fed and clothed was a never-ending
struggle. His men were making their own shoes now, when they could get the leather, which was not
often. The ration was down to three-quarters of a pound of meat a day, along with a little salt, sugar,
coffee-or rather, chicory and burnt grain-and lard. Bread, rice, corn... they trickled up the Virginia
Central and the Orange and Alexandria Railroad every so often, but not nearly often enough. He would
have to cut the daily allowance again, if more did not arrive soon.
President Davis, however, was as aware of all that as Lee could make him. To hash it over once more
would only seem like carping. Lee resumed: Genl Early is still in theA gun cracked, quite close to the
tent. Soldier's instinct pulled Lee's head up. Then he smiled and laughed at himself. One of his staff
officers, most likely, shooting at a possum or a squirrel. He hoped the young man scored a hit.
But no sooner had the smile appeared than it vanished. The report of the gun sounded-odd. It had been
an abrupt bark, not a pistol shot or the deeper boom of an Enfield rifle musket. Maybe it was a
captured Federal weapon.
The gun cracked again and again and again. Each report came closer to the one before than two
heartbeats were to each other. A Federal weapon indeed, Lee thought: one of those fancy repeaters
their cavalry like so well. The fusillade went on and on. He frowned at the waste of precious
cartridges-no Southern armory could easily duplicate them.
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He frowned once more, this time in puzzlement, when silence fell. He had automatically kept count of
the number of rounds fired. No Northern rifle he knew was a thirty-shooter.
He turned his mind back to the letter to President Davis. -Valley, he wrote. Then gunfire rang out
again, an unbelievably rapid stutter of shots, altogether too quick to count and altogether unlike
anything he had ever heard. He took off his glasses and set down the pen. Then he put on a hat and got
up to see what was going on.
At the tent fly, Lee almost collided with one of his aides-decamp, who was hurrying in as he tried to
leave. The younger man came to attention. "I beg your pardon, sir."
"Quite all right, Major Taylor. Will this by any chance have something to do with the, ah, unusual gun
I heard fired just now?"
"Yes, sir." Walter Taylor seemed to be holding on to military discipline with both hands. He was, Lee
reminded himself, only twenty-five or so, the youngest of all the staff officers. Now he drew out a
sheet of paper, which he handed to Lee. "Sir, before you actually see the gun in action, as I just have,
here is a communication from Colonel Gorgas in Richmond concerning
"In matters concerning ordnance of any sort, no view could be more pertinent than that of Colonel
Gorgas," Lee agreed. He drew out his reading glasses once more, set them on the bridge of his nose.
Bureau of Ordnance, Richmond January 17, 1864 General Lee:
I have the honor to present to you with this letter Mr. Andries Rhoodie of Rivington, North Carolina,
who has demonstrated in my presence a new rifle, which I believe may prove to be of the most
significant benefit conceivable to our soldiers. As he expressed the desire of making your
acquaintance & as the Army of Northern Virginia will again, it is likely, face hard fighting in the
months ahead, I send him on to you that you may judge both him & his remarkable weapon for
yourself. I remain, Your most ob 't servant, Josiah Gorgas, Colonel
Lee folded the letter, handed it back to Taylor. As he returned his glasses to their pocket, he said,
"Very well, Major. I was curious before; now I find my curiosity doubled. Take me to Mr.-Rhoodie,
was it?"
"Yes, sir. He's around behind the tents here. If you will come with me-" Breath smoking in the chilly
air, Lee followed his aide-decamp. He was not surprised to see the flaps from the other three tents that
made up his headquarters were open; anyone who had heard that gunfire would want to learn what had
made it. Sure enough, the rest of his officers were gathered round a big man who did not wear
Confederate gray.
The big man did not wear the yellow-brown that was the true color of most home-dyed uniforms,
either, nor the black of the general run of civilian clothes. Lee had never seen an outfit like the one he
had on. His coat and trousers were of mottled green and brown, so that he almost seemed to disappear
against dirt and brush and bare-branched trees. A similarly mottled cap had flaps to keep his ears
warm. Seeing Lee approach, the staff officers saluted. He returned the courtesy. Major Taylor stepped
ahead.
"General Lee, gentlemen, this is Mr. Andries Rhoodie. Mr. Rhoodie, here is General Lee, whom you
may well recognize, as well as my colleagues, Majors Venable and Marshall."
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"I am pleased to meet all you gentlemen, especially the famous General Lee," Rhoodie said.
"You are much too kind, sir," Lee murmured politely.
"By no means," Rhoodie said. "I would be proud to shake your hand." He held out his own. As they
shook, Lee tried to take the stranger's measure. He spoke like an educated man, but not like a
Carolinian. His accent sounded more nearly British, though it also held a feint guttural undertone. His
odd clothes aside, Rhoodie did not look like a Carolinian, either. His face was too square, his features
too heavy. That heaviness made him seem almost indecently well fleshed to Lee, who was used to the
lean, hungry men of the Army of Northern Virginia.
But Rhoodie's bearing was erect and manly, his handclasp firm and strong. His gray eyes met Lee's
without wavering. Somewhere in his past, Lee was suddenly convinced, he had been a soldier: those
were marksman's eyes. By the wrinkles at their corners and by the white hairs that showed in his
bushy reddish mustache, Rhoodie had to be nearing forty, but the years had only toughened him. Lee
said, "Colonel Gorgas gives you an excellent character, sir, you and your rifle both. Will you show it
to me?"
"In a moment, if I may," Rhoodie answered, which surprised Lee. In his experience, most inventors
were wildly eager to show off their brainchildren. Rhoodie went on, "First, sir, I would like to ask you
a question, which I hope you will be kind enough to answer frankly."
"Sir, you are presumptuous," Charles Marshall said. The wan winter sun glinted from the lenses of his
spectacles and turned his normally animated face into something stern and a little inhuman. Lee held
up a hand. "Let him ask what he would, Major. You need not forejudge his intentions." He glanced
toward Rhoodie, nodded for him to continue. He had to look up to meet the stranger's eye, which was
unusual, for he was nearly six feet tall himself. But Rhoodie overtopped him by three or four inches. "I
thank you for your patience with me," he said now in that not-quite-British accent. "Tell me this, then:
what do you make of the Confederacy's chances for the coming year's campaign and for the war as a
whole?"
"To be or not to be, that is the question," Marshall murmured.
"I hope our prospects are somewhat better than poor Hamlet's, Major," Lee said. His staff officers
smiled. Rhoodie, though, simply waited. Lee paused to marshal his thoughts. "Sir, since I have but so
briefly had the honor of your acquaintance, I hope you will forgive me for clinging to what may be
plainly seen by any man with some knowledge and some wit: that is, our enemies are superior to us in
numbers, resources, and the means and appliances for carrying on the war. If those people"-his
common euphemism for the Federals-"use their advantages vigorously, we can but counterpoise to
them the courage of our soldiers and our confidence in Heaven's judgment of the justice of our cause.
Those have sufficed thus far. God willing, they shall continue to do so."
"Who said God is for the big battalions?" Rhoodie asked.
"Voltaire, wasn't it?" Charles Venable said. He had been a professor of mathematics before the war,
and was widely read.
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"A freethinker if ever there was one," Marshall added disapprovingly.
"Oh, indeed," Rhoodie said, "but far from a fool. When you are weaker than your foes, should you not
take the best advantage of what you do have?"
"That is but plain sense," Lee said. "No one could disagree." Now Rhoodie smiled, or his mouth did;
the expression stopped just short of his eyes. "Thank you, General Lee. You have just given much of
my sales talk for me."
"Have I?"
"Yes, sir, you have. You see, my rifle will let you conserve your most precious resource of all-your
men." Walter Taylor, who had seen the gun in action, sucked in a long, deep breath. "It could be so,"
he said quietly.
"I await the demonstration, Mr. Rhoodie," Lee said.
"You will have it." Rhoodie unslung the weapon. Lee had already noted it was of carbine length,
stubby next to an infantry musket. Because it was so short, its socket bayonet seemed the longer.
Rhoodie reached over his shoulder into his haversack. That was made of mottled cloth like his trousers
and coat, and looked to be of finer manufacture than even a Union man carried. Most of Lee's soldiers
made do with a rolled-up blanket. The tall stranger produced a curved metal object, perhaps eight
inches long and an inch and a half or two inches wide. He clicked it into place in front of the carbine's
trigger. "This is the magazine," he said. "When it's full, it holds thirty rounds." "In fine, the rifle now
has bullets in it," Taylor said. "As all of you will no doubt have noticed, it is a breechloader." The
other aides nodded. Lee kept his own counsel.
With a rasping sound followed by a sharp, metallic click, Rhoodie drew back a shiny steel lever on the
right side of the rifle. "The first round from each magazine must be chambered manually," he said.
"What about the others?" Venable whispered to Taylor. "You'll see," Taylor whispered back. Rhoodie
reached into the haversack again. This time he drew out some folded papers. He unfolded one of them.
It proved to be a target, a cutout roughly approximating the shape of a man's head and body. He turned
to Lee's aides. "Will you gentlemen please put these up at different ranges out to, say, four or five
hundred yards?"
"With pleasure," Taylor said promptly. "I've seen how fast your rifle can shoot; I'd like to learn how
accurate it is." He took some of the targets; Rhoodie handed the rest to the other aides. They stuck
low-hanging branches through some, leaned others against bushes, both in the upright position and
sideways. "Shall I have them straighten those, sir?" Lee asked, pointing. "They will make your
shooting more difficult."
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